Coping with life as a wife in Kathmandu has been the most challenging role of Manisha Koirala's career. Then on top of it there are all these rumours of trouble in the marital paradise. According to close friends Manisha is doing her best to work things out with her husband Samrat. The problem, say friends, is the joint family. Manisha is trying hard to blend into Samrat's family.

Says a source, "While it's been easy for Manisha to adjust being a wife, blending into her husband's family has been far more difficult. But she's trying. Manisha desperately wants to make the marriage work."

To make the hours seem less stretched-out in the soporific town of Kathmandu Manisha has taken to painting. Now just months after her marriage, Manisha has become a voracious painter. She spends a major part of the day at the anvil.

Says Manisha, "It all started as just another form of self-expression. When I liked the feel of the brush against the canvas I decided to get more professional about it."

Manisha got her self a tutor. "Can you believe it? My painting guru is from Maharashtra! So I go all the way from Mumbai to Nepal and get myself a Marathi teacher for painting."

Now Manisha is keenly hooked to painting. "It's more than a hobby now. It's a growing passion. I don't know where it will take me. But then I've always followed my heart." Manisha will soon have her first painting exhibition as soon she is confident of holding her own.

Just back from Goa where she represented her first Malayalam film Electra at the film festival, Manisha is hungering to get back to the limelight. "I guess once an actor always an actor. I got an overwhelming response to Electra in Goa. It's a very different role. I had to play a mother and a woman who has an extra-marital affair. I was advised not to do it. But now I am so happy with the way the film has shaped up."

Now she's persuading the director Shyam Prasad Raddy to remake the same film into Hindi. Back home in Kathmandu Manisha has gifted herself a brand new car. Laughs the actress, "I'm so happy with the way my film has been received in Goa I've gifted myself a yellow Volkswagen Beetel car."